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Fantasy Football Draft Order Generator

Type in your managers, shuffle, and reveal the draft order one pick at a time. Pin any slot, choose a snake, linear or third-round reversal board, and share the result with your league.

How to set a fantasy draft order

1. Type the manager names or team names, one per line. Pin anyone to a fixed slot with @, such as Sam @3.
2. Pick the draft type and how many rounds your league drafts.
3. Press Shuffle draft order. By default the order is revealed one pick at a time from the last pick up to pick 1, which is how a lottery usually works. Tick Show everything at once to skip the build-up.
4. When every pick is revealed, the draft board appears. Copy the order, share the link, or print the board.

Snake, linear and third-round reversal

The order of the first round is only half of a draft. How the later rounds work matters at least as much:

• Snake: the order reverses every round, so the last pick of round one is also the first pick of round two. It is the most common format in fantasy football.
• Linear: the same order every round. Easy to run but it favours the early picks heavily, so it is mostly used in auction-style or keeper leagues.
• Third-round reversal: round one goes forward, rounds two and three both go backward, and the snake continues from round four. It is meant to offset the advantage of holding the first pick, who would otherwise pick early again at the start of round three.

Why a visible reveal helps

A shuffled list pasted into a chat can look suspicious, especially if the commissioner is also a manager. Revealing the order in front of everyone, from the last pick to pick 1, makes the draw feel like an event and cuts the argument. If your league prefers to do it live, share your screen, or send the share link so everyone can see the same result. For leagues that need a record, copy the order into your league notes.

Pinning picks for keepers and traditions

Some leagues give the champion the last pick, or guarantee a rookie manager a middle slot. Use the @ pin for these cases. Pinned managers are placed first, and the rest are shuffled into whatever is left. Pinning narrows the randomness for the rest of the league, so tell everyone before the draw what has been fixed.

More ways to use it

Besides fantasy football, this works for fantasy hockey, baseball and basketball drafts, and for non-fantasy uses such as deciding the speaking order for a meeting, who picks the film, or who deals first. After the draft, give every manager a real team to follow with the random NFL team generator, or pick a team name for each fantasy team.

Related tools

To split a group into teams instead, use the random team generator. Playing a video game with friends? The NBA and NHL team generators can assign a different team to each player.

FAQ

How do I randomise a fantasy football draft order?

Type each manager on its own line and press Shuffle draft order. Then reveal the picks one at a time, starting from the last pick, or reveal them all at once.

Can I fix one manager to a specific pick?

Yes. Add @ and a pick number after the name, for example Jo @1. Everyone else is shuffled into the open slots. If two managers ask for the same pick, the second is shuffled with the rest and the page tells you.

What is a snake draft?

In a snake draft the order reverses every round. The manager with the last pick in round one picks first in round two, so the manager with the first pick does not get two early picks in a row.

What is third-round reversal?

It follows a snake for the first two rounds, repeats the round-two order in round three, then continues the snake from round four. The idea is to offset the advantage of holding the first pick. The board on this page follows that pattern.

Is the order really random?

Yes. It uses your browser's cryptographic random number generator with a Fisher–Yates shuffle. In a test of 30,000 shuffles of six managers each position came up equally often, within normal random variation.

Can I use it for something other than fantasy football?

Yes. It works for any fantasy sport, for a real-life draft among friends, for choosing who goes first in a game, or for shuffling a presentation order.

Can I share the order with my league?

Yes. Copy share link gives a link that shows the same order to everyone who opens it, and Copy order gives plain text for your league chat.

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